The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

368 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
Hebrew case must bear the onus of proof. One very striking example
from the Babatha material is the use of the expression 'saying'
(Xeycov, A,eyo i uacx, etc.) to introduce direct speech, equivalent to our
inverted commas. In the LXX this very common expression translates
the Hebrew ~IQ«^ or the Aramaic no'ia 1 ?, and of course it is found in the
New Testament in the Gospels, Acts and Revelation. Another alleged
New Testament 'septuagintalism', the use of EK in partitive expressions
appears in the Babatha Greek papyri, which also at times display the
idiomatic Greek version without EK. The form with EK/E^ occurs at
P. Yadin 5 b i 2, whereas that with the simple genitive is found in P.
Yadin 15.29, 14.[23-24], cf. P. Yadin 11.10, 35. There is a further
development of it in 5 a i. 11-13, EK TCOCVTOQ xponov ^.EiKpov ml
jiEydXou EK rcdvTCQV o>v E-upEOrj rcatpEt aov. Compare the Aramaic
-[•ntf? ronoK H *?D pi men T»T onin *» p 'of everything great and
small, and of all that is found with your father'. There is really so
much evidence in the Babatha papyri that demonstrates what happens
when Aramaic is being put into Greek, and much of it reminds us of
those New Testament Semitisms which are so often attributed to
influence of the LXX. Indeed, commenting on an expression in P.
Yadin 15.6-21, the editors of the documents remark: 'The whole
quoted expression sounds like what it is—the work of a writer
thinking in Aramaic and remembering sporadically about the definite
article as he indites [!] the document in Greek'. 10 One other very wellknown
New Testament 'septuagintalism' is arcoKpCvoncu with XEYEIV.
The examples in P. Yadin 25.13, 45 may be true replies, but that in
25.24 looks for all the world like Aramaic in Greek disguise.
The broad language of the New Testament is part of the prevalent
koine Greek, but from time to time we see behind it signs of Aramaic
and sometimes also, of Hebrew influence. To say this is not to attempt
to revive the spectre of 'biblical Greek' or 'Jewish Greek' as though
there were such distinct languages or dialects. Apart from some
remarks by Nigel Turner, those theories, at least in their more self-
10. The Documents from the Bar Kokhba Period in the Cave of Letters. Greek
Papyri, ed. Naphtali Lewis; Aramaic and Nabatean Signatures and Subscriptions.
eds. Y. Yadin and J.C. Greenfield (Judean Desert Series 2; Jerusalem: Israel
Exploration Society, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, The Shrine of the Book,
1989), p. 14.